Farewell to instruction manuals

I can usually cope fairly well without instruction manuals but they can be useful to discover features that might not otherwise be obvious.

There is no excuse for providing poorly written instructions and the fact that many electronic products come with some sort of display screen makes them easier to use without resorting to a manual.

When the UK started to import a lot of goods from overseas in the 70s there were some instructions were full of amusing statements. A friend had a Russian SLR camera with a warning to ‘keep your fingers off the flipping mirror’. I have seen ‘Your statutory rights are not effected’ more than once.

I recently purchased a laptop without a DVD drive and wanted to load some older software that I had on disk. Rather than searching the loft for an old external DVD drive I decided to try installing the software wirelessly from a laptop with a DVD drive. It was easy to find simple instructions online.

I commented elswhere about a 150 page in small print with small diagrams) manual for my TV DVD player / recorder. Whether in print or on line I needed a basics guide to do the set up and principal operations. My bridge camera can do a huge range of things apparently – the DVD accompanying it carrys the long manual – but it also came with a short printed booklet that told me how to take photos and movies.

As many of these devices come with, or are attached to, screens then on-screen guidance could be given for specific tasks. I forget some of the basics if I haven’t used a device for a while.

I used to be an engineer – albeit a mechanical and hydraulic engineer who learned about electrics and electronics as I got promoted from the experts with me. But in the 25 years since I retired there has been a whole new world of technology develop with jargon that just wasn’t there in my day – there wasn’t the technology for it!. I have recently been baffled by a very poor manual that came with a Humax PVR. A very good product let down by a manual that has made it difficult to get the best out of it. And at least I’m able from my earlier knowledge to eventually find my way round it.
My youngest daughter once replied to my email asking what on earth she was talking about gave me a step by step set of instructions on how to text on our newly acquired first mobile phone. The last line in the instructions was “should you still be struggling, ask any passing eleven year old”. Maybe that’s the best bit of advice for all of us over 70.

Whatever form the manual is in, it has to be easily understood by non technical people. Surely it’s easy, but I suspect never done, to circulate a draft manual to a range of potential users and if any part of it isn’t quickly understandable, it must be rewritten, again and again if necessary, until it is. Maybe Which could include a ‘manual rating’ in product reviews.

Far too many manuals, both on and off line are written by the designers of the product without a though as to the end user. They also fail by assuming that a level of knowledge already exists in thew buyer. In some cases they are correct, but in many the buyer is new either to the class of product or just the product itself. I echo the call by Bady that any manual should pass the test of being easily understood by anyone you stop in the street and, if not, it should be revised as many times as necessary until it is.

I have a digital camera (not a point-and-shoot, quite a complex piece of equipment) where the only manual provided was on a CD. That’s not much use when I’m out taking photos! Fortunately I managed to buy a pocket-sized printed manual on line.

I’m not completely computer-illiterate, I used to work with computers before I retired, and I love my (rather elderly) computer. But I find it much more difficult to take in information when I see it on a screen than when it’s printed on paper. I don’t know why this is, but speaking to other people my age I find that they mostly feel the same. Maybe it’s what you get used to when you’re young?

As for the quality of English in some manuals, whether on line or on paper, if it wasn’t so infuriating it would be hilarious! Still things haven’t changed that much over the years. When I used to be a computer programmer, our definition of a technical manual was “a 3-inch thick book without an index”!

I bought a Kazam mobile phone and when I got it home there were no instructions. I have managed to set it up but still struggle with some issues such as taking a photo. I e-mailed the manufacturer and they said a manual would be produced to down load, but it still hasn’t happened.I e-mailed a second time and still no respons e after about 6 months.

It’s all very well for the tree hugging greenies, but what happens when the batteries run down???
Answer me that!
Anyone who has worked in the Middle East knows that in those thousands of square mile of rocks and sand there are precious few charging points, even in this day and age.
Think of all the practical aspects of the printed manual, you can start a fire, jammed in tight enough, plug holes in dykes, and if you are ever “caught short,” all those pages in Albanian to Zulu are very useful. You can’t do that with your smartphone!
Where’s the Admiral Benbow when you need it?? Aaargh.

Aaargh, Jim Lad! Greetings! There’s a few more Conversations on here that could do with some straight-talking from Treasure Island.

I was given a Kindle Fire Tablet recently and all the instructions are on the device. As an OAP I find it hard to read through pages of instructions them implement them from memory. I would much prefer a hard copy which I could refer to whilst using my tablet.

My trouble with the digital world started in 2002 when I was issued with a Siemens mobile phone at work. I took it and the two instruction books,one basic, the second more complicated,home to read. I could not understand them. This has been my difficulty with the digital world since, with few exceptions.In the Analogue days I enjoyed reading the instruction books, which often dealt with most basic matters first. Digital instructions often leave these out. I could write a book on this subject!!!

Having recently bought a Samsung TV, I was surprised to find that it did not come with an Instruction Manual. I was informed that I would be able to download one & print it from my PC; however I was not told that it contained 800+ pages!!!
As I am a silver surfer & not particularly pc savvy with the added disadvantage of an EXTREMELY slow broadband speed, a paper manual would be worth it’s weight in gold to me! Call me old-fashioned but new & up-to-date isn’t always better!

We bought a camera with only a basic manual. We found a company in the UK which could supply an A5 spiral-bound manual. I will try to tell you the details tomorrow. An on-line search finds several such suppliers.

When will businesses realize that not everyone has, or is able to have, a computer directly accessing the internet, or have, (or not want to pay for what we will not use), a smartphone? Luckily I have usually been able to find a manual for an appliance on the manufacturers website by using the library computers, but the absolute mindset of ‘everyone knows this’, or ‘you have to go online to get this’ is extremely annoying.
Mind you, I do find some of the instructions written by someone whose first language is not English very funny, (ha-ha type).

RichardC 58 today posted this in the other instruction book Conversation :

“On the subject of paper manuals, most of them are printed, in small format, on cheap paper which turns brown and crumbles when we save them. Compare them with sales brochures which are printed on glossy acid-free paper… ”

I’ve transpoerted it here because I think it’s a very good point and gives the lie to the supposed environmental justification for the absence of instruction manuals or for providing them n minimal form and survivability.

As a spritly late sixties pensioner, I find both printed manuals and on line ones are both useful, My wife however is not computer savvy at all and requires paper copies.

The last two cameras I have bought have no instruction manual.Go into search bar and seek out Old Time Cameras, they print out a small instruction manual for approx £12 which is printed from the disc(which they search for).Fantastic company with superb service

Before worrying about the manuals media we need to do something about the quality of the instructions. Today there seems to be a contest in all areas to produce the most incomprehensible manual. Worst are inbuilt manuals where you need a manual but need to hack the device to find the manual.
Also its rare that an inbult manual can be read while trying to follow the instructions!!

I think depending on what you do it would be nice to have a hard copy of the manual. There is a lot of great options to choose from. Sometimes it is nice to have a hard copy to have in your hand. There will be times that you will not have internet access to find what you are looking for. I I hope more people will be able to have more hard copies to have.

You can take your manuals with you – if you have a smart phone.

I use DropBox, an application on my phone and laptop.
DropBox copies files from a folder on the laptop to the equivanlent folder on my phone (and visa versa.)

Each time I get a new piece of equipment I put a copy of the manual in the DropBox folder.
(Most manuals are available on-line on the manufacturers web site.)
Within minutes it’s on my phone.

If you are often befuddled by the manual that came with your new technology you are not alone. Some years back a friend and myself considered this problem. We where trying to install a hard drive to a computer system. I had just taught myself how to program in Hexadecimal. I need a way to store my work so I purchased a Hard Drive to was very large 20 Megabytes. This was a lot of years ago and up until then we had been using a tape recorder for program storage. After a few week and more that a few calls to several company’s we got it to work.
After this we sat down to discuss why we had so much trouble understanding he manual that now made perfect since to use. We came to realist the problem is quite simple. The person who wrote the manual wrote it for himself. Therefore only a person who knew what he knew could understand it. That is why authors are making money writing manuals called “For Dummies”. It is not that the end user is a Dummy it is that it is written for people that do not know the product before they read the manual.

I think I’m fairly competent with figuring out technology but the problem I face is when you get more complicated appliances like washing machines with 50 drying modes you have to press through. Then you refer to the manual with the reaction being ???. It should be possible to follow the directions without having done a plumbing or engineering course. My area is computers, not appliances. What happened to:
– If you want to dry clothing step 1. press this (a) if you want this press this first (b) if you want this etc. 2. press this to start.

Sometimes the vague icon-based buttons to make it work in various countries just makes it all the more confusing.

I’d rather be patronised by the instructions than lost in them.

I have noticed that items like laptops no longer are supplied with paper manuals so you have to switch them on to be told on an on line manual how to unpack and switch it on, a bit late I think!!!